As ones which are offered in recent years to the market as a server that manages a client-server system in its entirety on a generalizing basis, there is known a server system in which an information processing apparatus having a server function and a monitoring apparatus that always observes the state of the information processing apparatus are installed in one case (refer to non-patent document 1, for instance).
According to the server system as mentioned above, when the breakdown occurs in the machine, the information processing apparatus notifies the monitoring apparatus installed in the server system of the breakdown generation. Upon receipt of the notification, the monitoring apparatus gathers various types of sub-data representative of the operation states of individual section in the information processing apparatus when the breakdown occurs for instance, through access to individual section in the information processing apparatus. Then the monitoring apparatus stores two or more sets of sub-data thus gathered in a predetermined storage area of the monitoring apparatus in form of state data representative of the state of the information processing apparatus at the time when the breakdown occurs.
The information processing apparatus is often designed so as to continuously operate even if the breakdown occurs in the machine, in order to manage the client-server system as continuously as possible. When the breakdown occurs two or more times on the information processing apparatus, the monitoring apparatus gathers and stores the state data from the information processing apparatus whenever the breakdown occurs. And, the state data stored by that time is analyzed at regular maintenance etc. At that time, for instance, when the part in the state that causes the significant drop of the processing performance and the down of the server is found, treatment such as the repair of the part or the exchanges with the new article is taken.
Incidentally, hitherto, regarding the storage of the state data of the monitoring apparatus as mentioned above, a simple storage method, which will be described exemplarily hereinafter, is often adopted.
FIG. 13 is a view useful for understanding an example of a conventional storage method for the state data of the monitoring apparatus.
An storage area 800 shown in FIG. 13 is divided into the division of N pieces of the mutually same size, in which individual one state data is stored.
The number is applied to individual division like #1, #2, #3, . . . , #N. The state data, which is gathered in the monitoring apparatus whenever the breakdown generates, is sequentially stored from the division corresponding to a young number in order. Moreover, at that time, the serial number is applied to the state data like log 1, log 2, log 3, . . . , log N.
Part (a) of FIG. 13 shows the state that all divisions have become empty. Part (b) of FIG. 13 shows the state that only one division is occupied with a piece of state data. Part (c) of FIG. 13 shows the state that all divisions of store N pieces of state data. Part (d) of FIG. 13 shows the state that the state data of piece N+1 is stored following the state shown in part (c) of FIG. 13. As seen from part (d) of FIG. 13, state data Jn+1 of piece N+1 gathered exceeding N piece that is the number of maximum storage of the storage area 800 is overwritten in state data J1 of piece first. Similarly, state data of piece N+2 is overwritten in state data of piece second, and state data of piece N+3 is overwritten in state data of piece third.
[Non-patent document 1] Internet<URL:http://primerserver.fujitsu.com/primepower/news/article/05/0111/on “High trust and solution that PRIMEPOWER (registered trademark) and PRIMECLUSTER (registered trademark) weave high available” online and Jan. 11, 2005, FUJITSU Ltd. and retrieval on Feb. 1, 2006.
According to the storage method of requiring the overwrite of data as mentioned above, the state data gathered in relation to the breakdown that causes the significant drop in the processing performance and the down of the server may be lost by overwrite with the state data gathered afterwards. Thus, when maintaining it, such a serious breakdown might be overlooked.
In order to suppress the occurrence such a situation so as to improve the precision of the discovery of the breakdown at the time of maintenance etc, for instance, there is considered such a method of suppressing the frequency of the overwrite by preparing a mass storage area which is provided with the division as mentioned above as a lot as possible. However, a preparation of such mass storage area brings about problems such as rise of cost and an increase in installation space, etc.
Though there is explained the problem that the breakdown might be overlooked here raising by way of example the monitoring apparatus that observes the operation of the information processing apparatus that has the server function in the client-server system, such a problem may be generally caused when the state data obtained from some information processing apparatus is stored in a memory, but not restricted to the client-server system.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide a monitoring apparatus capable of discovering the breakdown on an information processing apparatus with greater accuracy, an executive program that causes a computer to operate as the monitoring apparatus, and an information processing system capable of discovering the breakdown on an information processing apparatus with greater accuracy.